EU EconomyForeign citizens accounted for 6.5% of the total EU27 population in 2010
By Finfacts Team
Jul 15, 2011 - 5:32 AM

In 2010, 32.5m foreign citizens lived in the EU27
member countries, of which 12.3m were citizens of another EU27 member country
and the remaining 20.2m were citizens of countries outside the EU27. Foreign
citizens accounted for 6.5% of the total EU27 population. On average in 2010,
foreign citizens living in the EU27 were significantly younger than the
population of nationals (median age 34.4 years compared with 41.5 years). These
figures come from a report published by Eurostat, the statistics office of the
European Union.

The proportion of foreign citizens varied between less than 2% in Poland,
Lithuania and Slovakia and 43% in Luxembourg

In 2010, the largest numbers of foreign citizens
were recorded in Germany (7.1m persons or 9% of the total population), Spain
(5.7m or 12%), the United Kingdom (4.4m or 7%), Italy (4.2m or 7%) and France
(3.8m or 6%). In total, more than 75% of the foreign citizens in the EU27 lived
in these five member countries.

Among the EU27 member countries, the highest
percentage of foreign citizens in the population was observed in Luxembourg (43%
of the total population), followed by Latvia (17%), Estonia and Cyprus (both
16%). The percentage of foreign citizens was less than 2% in Poland, Lithuania
and Slovakia.

In terms of citizenship, nearly 40% of the EU
foreign population were citizens of another EU27 member country, with the
highest shares in Luxembourg (86% of the foreign population), Ireland (80%),
Belgium (68%), Cyprus (66%), Slovakia (62%) and Hungary (59%.

A third of the foreign-born population born in another EU27
Member Country

Eurostat says data on foreign citizens provide useful
information on the part of the population with a foreign background. However,
since citizenship can change over time, it is interesting to complement this
information with data on the foreign-born population1. This provides
supplementary information as it includes foreign citizens who have acquired the
citizenship of the country of residence, but who were born abroad. It also
includes nationals born abroad (for example in the territory of a former colony)
or nationals born in a part of a state which, due to dissolution or border
changes, no longer belongs to the same country.

The number of foreign-born people
exceeded the number of foreign citizens in all member countries, except in
Luxembourg, Latvia and the Czech Republic.

In 2010, there were 47.3m foreign-born people
living in the EU27, with 16.0m born in
another EU27 member country and 31.4m born in a country outside the EU27. In
total, foreign-born people accounted for 9.4% of the total population of the
EU27.

Data on the place of birth of the
foreign-born population show that one third of foreign-born people living in the
EU27 were born in another EU27 member country, with proportions above 50% being
observed in Luxembourg (83% of total
foreign-born), Ireland (77%) and Hungary (67%).